IS THIS IS A REAL BLOG OR A PARODY OF A BLOG AND BLOGGING?
A blog, or parody of a blog, or anti-blog blog (you decide) about politics, media, and culture... and whatever else I feel like putting up here... for a few of my closest friends.

Khizr
Khan, the soldier’s father, lashed out at Mr. Trump in an interview on
Saturday, saying his wife had not spoken at the convention because it
was too painful for her to talk about her son’s death.

Mr. Trump, he said, “is devoid of feeling the pain of a mother who has sacrificed her son.”...

Mr. Trump told Mr. Stephanopoulos that Mr. Khan seemed like a “nice guy”
and that he wished him “the best of luck.” But, he added, “If you look
at his wife, she was standing there, she had nothing to say, she
probably — maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say, you tell
me.”

“They begin to see this person who can hardly speak correct English, who
has an accent — and they are saying, ‘How dare he say something of that
profound nature?’ Not profound in their eyes, but profound in how many
people have responded,” said Khan, a Harvard-trained lawyer who lives in
Charlottesville, Va.

Sunday, March 29, 2015

When executives at Assurant Health announced last month that the
company would be going out of business, they blamed Obamacare. And they
had a point. The sweeping healthcare revision outlawed one of Assurant's
most profitable practices: charging its sickest customers higher prices
or pulling their coverage entirely.

A complaint the company settled with
Montana’s commissioner of securities and insurance, made public
Thursday, offers a glimpse into how Assurant Health does business even
as it winds down operations. The complaint alleged that the
insurer discriminated against less-healthy customers and manipulated
prices. In settling the allegations made by the state’s insurance
commissioner, Assurant did not admit to any wrongdoing, but it agreed to
pay $1.7 million in refunds to Montana customers and a $25,000 fine to
the state. The settlement was signed July 1.

Assurant
Health’s accusation that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) killed its
earnings turns out to be true. Assurant’s decline illustrates the law’s
effectiveness as a tool for preventing discriminatory practices in
health coverage. Assurant Health, which once provided more than 1
million Americans with health insurance, generated $1.9 billion in revenue in 2014 but
posted a loss of $64 million. In the first quarter of 2015 alone, it
lost $84 million. The company’s profits sank at least in part because it
could no longer engage in what federal and state regulators say were
unethical practices to rid its rolls of the sickest patients. The ACA
made many such practices illegal...

But allegations in the Montana insurance commissioner’s complaint
illustrate that Assurant Health -- even as it’s shutting down -- has
continued to engage in practices that are no longer legal.

Commissioner Monica J. Lindeen’s complaint alleged Assurant charged
two prices for the same health-insurance policies: a lower price for
healthier customers and a higher price for sicker Montanans. Lindeen
said Assurant Health offered what it called “discounts” to customers who
had very few health-insurance claims...

More serious allegations in the past centered on claims that
Assurant engaged in a practice known as “rescission” or “post-claims
underwriting” in which the company conducted aggressive investigations
of customers diagnosed with life-threatening and expensive illnesses --
such as cancer, HIV or lymphoma -- to find some pretext to cancel their
policies. Investigations between 2005 and 2010 by state and federal
regulators, as well as a U.S. House of Representatives committee
concluded that very rarely was a customer’s health insurance canceled
for a legitimate reason.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is failing
to sanction states that house excessive numbers of teenagers and
children in adult jails and prisons, placing them at greater risk for
violent attacks, sexual assaults and suicide, two career Justice
Department employees plan to testify Tuesday in front of a Senate panel.

Under a 1974 law known as the Juvenile Justice and
Delinquency Prevention Act, the Justice Department is required to
sharply curtail some federal aid to state governments when those states
incarcerate too many juveniles and children in adult jails and prisons.
The law also demands that the federal government withhold such funds
from states that lock up large numbers of so-called status offenders --
children and teens who have engaged in minor offenses such as truancy,
curfew violations, drinking alcohol or running away from home.

The law was later amended to require the Justice
Department to also cut grant money to states that fail to make fixes
after the determination that their criminal justice systems hold
"disproportionate" numbers of minority youths.

The two career Justice Department officials are
expected to testify that the Obama administration is in violation of
federal law by continuing to provide these funds to eight jurisdictions
that do not meet one or more of those standards: Virginia, Illinois,
Tennessee, Rhode Island, Idaho and Alabama, plus the District of
Columbia and Puerto Rico...

Stanford filed a
299-page brief last month with the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in
New Orleans, making no fewer than 15 lengthy arguments about why he
should be set free. He was convicted in 2012 on 13 felony charges
related to America’s second-largest Ponzi scheme ever and sentenced to
110 years in prison.

Before being halted by a federal judge in
Dallas in 2009, Stanford’s fraud had drawn in more victims than any
other investment scheme in American history. There are more than 18,000
outstanding claims from defrauded investors and thousands more under
review.

Investors had deposited about $5.5 billion with Stanford, and so far just $72 million has been repaid to investors...

A grand jury indicted Texas governor Rick Perry late yesterday on two
felony charges alleging that he had abused his public office and engaged
in the coercion of another public official—a district attorney who was
investigating Perry’s administration and political backers.

The criminal charges stem from Perry using the official powers of his
office as governor to attempt to remove Rosemary Lehmberg, a Travis
County district attorney, from office, while Lehmberg was investigating
allegations that Perry’s political allies and campaign contributors had
received preferential treatment while obtaining grants from a Texas
state cancer-fighting agency.

After Lehmberg pleaded guilty to drunk driving charges last year, Perry
vetoed a $7.5 million appropriation by the state legislature to fund
the Travis County Public Integrity Unit of the district attorney’s
office. Perry said he vetoed the funding for the anti-corruption unit
because the drunk driving charges proved that Lehmberg was unfit for
office—while others viewed the governor’s actions as an attempt to
stymie and defund an investigation of many of Perry’s closest political
associates as Perry himself was preparing his second run for the
presidency...

A former senior Securities and Exchange Commission official, Spencer
Barasch, quietly resigned earlier this month as a partner at the Texas
law firm Andrews Kurth after facing intensifying scrutiny of his legal
work for Houston financier R. Allen Stanford, who is serving a 110-year
prison sentence for masterminding a $7 billion Ponzi scheme.

Barasch’s resignation also came shortly after the settlement of a
bruising legal malpractice case against Andrews Kurth by a real estate
developer. The plaintiff had alleged that his company received
substandard legal advice from the law firm because of the firm’s dual
representation of the developer and Stanford for the very same real
estate transaction...

A former Securities and Exchange Commission official and his law firm
sought millions of dollars in new legal business in 2006 from financier
R. Allen Stanford—during the same period of time the law firm had agreed
to defend Stanford before the SEC, despite warnings from the SEC’s
ethics counsel that any such representation would be illegal.

Stanford lavished lucrative legal business on former SEC enforcement
officer Spencer C. Barasch and the Houston law firm of Andrews Kurth,
where Barasch is a partner, to persuade them to defend him before the
SEC. Initially, in 2005, Barasch and Andrews Kurth turned Stanford down
when he asked them to represent him before the SEC, telling him that to
do so would violate federal conflict-of-interest laws. In 2006, however,
Barasch ignored the legal prohibition and agreed to do so anyway.

Confidential Andrews Kurth billing records show that in 2006, while
Stanford was pressing Barasch and Andrews Kurth to defend him before the
SEC, Stanford hired the law firm to represent him on seven other legal
matters, adding an eighth in 2007. In addition, according to a former
Andrews Kurth employee, Barasch told his fellow partners that they stood
to earn as much as $2 million a year for defending Stanford before the
SEC. Previously, Stanford had been only a relatively modest client for
the law firm. Barasch and Andrews Kurth declined to comment for this
story.

It seemed like a minor adjustment. To comply with the Massachusetts
Supreme Judicial Court ruling that legalized gay marriage in 2003, the
state Registry of Vital Records and Statistics said it needed to revise
its birth certificate forms for babies born to same-sex couples. The box
for “father” would be relabeled “father or second parent,’’ reflecting
the new law.

But to then-Governor Mitt Romney, who opposed child-rearing by
gay couples, the proposal symbolized unacceptable changes in traditional
family structures.

He rejected the Registry of Vital Records plan and insisted that his
top legal staff individually review the circumstances of every birth to
same-sex parents. Only after winning approval from Romney’s lawyers
could hospital officials and town clerks across the state be permitted
to cross out by hand the word “father’’ on individual birth
certificates, and then write in “second parent,’’ in ink...

Former governor Mitt Romney’s administration
in 2006 blocked publication of a state antibullying guide for
Massachusetts public schools because officials objected to use of the
terms “bisexual’’ and “transgender’’ in passages about protecting
certain students from harassment, according to state records and
interviews with current and former state officials.

Related

Romney aides said publicly at the time that
publication of the guide had been delayed because it was a lengthy
document that required further review. But an e-mail authored in May of
that year by a high-ranking Department of Public Health official - and
obtained last week by the Globe through a public records request -
reflected a different reason.

“Because
this is using the terms ‘bisexual’ and ‘transgendered,’ DPH’s name may
not be used in this publication,’’ wrote the official, Alda
Rego-Weathers, then the deputy commissioner of the Massachusetts
Department of Public Health....

Friday, April 05, 2013

He also told an unflattering, but amusing story about sitting next to
former Vice President Al Gore at a dinner, saying being with him was
“taxing,” and added, “To be really honest, it’s unpleasant.”
Woodward
said Gore pressed him on why the journalist didn’t go after Bush, who
beat Gore in the 2000 presidential election, over the war in Iraq.
Gore
was a former reporter before becoming a politician, and “he thinks he
invented [reporting] also,” Woodward joked in reference to an often
misquoted statement that the ex-vice president claimed he invented the
Internet.

Besides the propriety of just comments, and what it tells us about how thin-skinned Woodward is, the larger point is that Gore was simply right.

Monday, May 07, 2012

Baseball notes:
Barry Zito somehow has apparently done a deal with the devil-- to pitch like-- trade places with-- Tim Lincecum. Since Zito and Lincecum play on the same team it's difficult how this deal with the devil helps the Giants exactly.

The Marlins finally get going. Tough division now, since it is already quite possible that the Phillies, Atlanta, and Nats might win ninety games. The Marlins may win eighty. The only thing preventing this is that teams in the same division play too many games together for this to happen.

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Doc Halladay wins his 17th against Milwaukee, lowering his ERA to 2.44. Prior to Halladay and Hamels winning the last two straight games against Milwaukee in Milwaukee, the Brewers had been 50-19 at home.

Tuesday, September 06, 2011

Tonight, the Phillies' fifth starter, a rookie, tonight won his eleventh game.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Vance Worley's record is now 11-1.

It was Worley's ninth straight win. The Phillies have now won Worley's 14 last consecutive starts. That is the most consecutive wins by a Phillies pitcher dating back to when the Phillies won 15 consecutive starts in 1972 when Steve Carlton was pitching. One also has go back almost four decades when a team won consistently with a rookie pitcher throwing. (Wayne Simpson won 14 straight starts for the Cincinnati Reds in the 1970s.)

The rookie showed some poise too: "The 23-year-old Worley was teetering on a high wire in the sixth inning, when the Braves loaded the bases with no outs. But after a sacrifice fly by Alex Gonzalez tied the game, 2-2, Worley prevented further damage."

"Cliff Lee threw his sixth shutout of the season on Monday, tying the highest total by any pitcher over the last 22 seasons; Randy Johnson had six in 1998 (two for Seattle, four for Houston). Lee has allowed two runs in 48 2/3 innings over his last six starts, a 0.37 ERA. Only two other Phillies pitchers, both cream-of-the-crop Hall of Famers, have had an ERA under 0.40 in a six-start span in one season: Steve Carlton in 1972 and Grover Alexander in 1915."

Also from Elias after tonight's game: "Cliff Lee is now 16-7 with a 2.47 ERA; Roy Halladay is 16-5 with a 2.49 ERA. The only other pair of teammates over the past 40 seasons to have at least 16 wins and an ERA under 2.50 on-or-before Labor Day was Pedro Martinez (17-4, 2.22 ERA) and Derek Lowe (18-6, 2.33 ERA) for Boston in 2002."

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Thoughts on the Phillies: As things stand tonight, the Phillies are 13-6. They are tied with the Colorado Rockies and Cleveland Indians for the best record in baseball.

They have one of the best rotations in the history of the game. A rotation that includes Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Cole Hamels, and Roy Oswalt seems more like a child's dream or one of a fantasy team rather than reality.

And so why do I have so much unease about my team? Let's start with the corner outfielders.

The loss of Jason Werth is immeasurable. Two years ago, he hit .268, 39 HR, and 99 RBI. Last year, he hit .296, 27 HR, and 85 RBI-- while also leading the league with 47 2B. Besides his numbers, Werth ran the bases well, played superb defense, but most important of all, hit behind Ryan Howard the last few seasons-- making sure that Howard got some pitches to hit. This season, Howard has so such protection.

Werth is now gone, leaving via free agency to the Washington Nationals.

In the meantime, left fielder Raul Ibanez is a player in decline. In 2009, he hit .272, 34 HR, and 93 RBI. Last year he declined to .275 BA, 16 HR, and 83 RBI, although he also hit 37 doubles. Now at age 39, Ibanez is battling to hit .200, albeit although we are only 17 games into the season. His defense, never stellar, is suffering as well. But still, the team has made no contingency to replace him.

If the team's management is not looking at who can be potentially fill at least one of the team's corner outfielder positions, some fans and sportswriters are. This column on Bleacher Reports discusses who is available. Unfortunately, there is not a lot there.

There are a couple of interesting names bandied around there and elsewhere: Carlos Quentin and Ryan Ludwick. One of them could be a regular outfielder for the Phillies, and bat behind Howard-- giving Howard some protection although not as much as he had when Werth batting behind him. With Quentin or Ludwick filling one outfield position, Dominic Brown (when he comes back from injury), John Mayberry, or Ben Franciso-- we hope-- might fill the other.

The problem is that the team right now is not concerned. Halladay, Lee, Hamels, and Oswalt might yet prove to be the best pitching rotation in the history of the game. But the four aces are making the team complacent.

Ask the Phillies management why they are not more concerned that their two corner outfielder positions are not producing much offense, and their response is that it is less of an issue for them than for other teams because of the four aces. Similarly, ask the Phillies if they are concerned about the prospects of their relief pitching as the season progresses, and they say not to worry because of their aces.

The complacency of having perhaps one of baseball history's best rotation might just turn out to be the team's downfall.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Christina Taylor Green was nine years old when she was killed. The gunman who murdered her and stole her from her family and friends and everyone else who loved her has foreclosed us from knowing what her future would have been otherwise. To contemplate who she should would have become only makes the crime that much more unspeakable, but it seems necessary to do so.

It is important now to consider what the life of Christina Taylor Green may have been, impossible as that may seem, because it is way to honor the life she already lived. It is important because her family has already begun to do so as part of their mourning process as has the community in which she was raised. But perhaps most importantly of all, to consider what her future might have been, and what she and we have lost, might provide some necessary motivation so that we do not let this happen to another child.

In defiance of her murderer, in defiance of those who tolerated the atmosphere that allowed her murder to occur, the murders of five others, and the attempted assassination of Gabby Giffords, we ask: What would Christina have become? Who would she have turned out to be? Would she have had children and grandchildren? Whose lives among us would she have impacted?

Christina was already serving and helping others. She already held elected office at age nine, serving on the student council of her elementary school. She worked for a charity that helped other children, Kids Helping Kids.

The last place her parents thought she would be harmed would be meeting her Congresswoman.

“I allowed her to go, thinking it would be an innocent thing,” Christina’s mother, Roxanna Green, told the New York Times.

At the age of 32, Gabby Giffords had once been the youngest woman elected to the Arizona State Senate, and now she was a Congresswoman. In a state that allowed for and even celebrated the fierce independence and strength of its women, it still was not too long ago that there were few women in elected politics. Gabby was to be a possible role model for Christina, one of the reasons that her parents were hoping that their daughter would be able to spend a few minutes with the Congresswoman.

Christina’s dad, John, told the Times, “I could have easily have seen her as a politician.”

Who is to say that if there has been no gunman in the strip mall, and had Christina had lived, that the events that day might have changed the direction of Christina’s life? Maybe it would have a seminal moment in the life of a child, laying the seeds for her to become involved in public service or public life.

Or perhaps it would have been just another and interesting and playful day in the life of a child that she would have enjoyed and meant little more. The answers are another thing stolen, irreplaceable, by the gunman.

I remember as young child listening to Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King on the radio and then watching them on television. I would listen on phonograph records to speeches made by John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. I was mesmerized. Words to a child (although hardly that much different to a grown up) were as commonplace and necessary as the air we breathe, but here these men were turning them into something else, the most powerful thing in the world. But it was as a child actually going to and watching Robert Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey that changed a life’s course.

Perhaps Christina meeting Gabby Giffords would have changed her life—and who and what she would have become. Or perhaps that is my personal projection.

Her dad has said in various interviews that envisioned her in public life.

But Christina’s father is probably like most dads of young children that I know. On other days, or alternatively even on the same day, they imagine their children has been all grown up doing any number of things.

I have an acquaintance who adopted their three year old from Kazakhstan. His son has his own YouTube video doing a perfect rendition of a song from the Little Mermaid. His dad is convinced, in part because of that performance, that his son will be a politician. Or course the same YouTube performance leads his dad on other occasion to think that his son will be other days be a great actor. And that is only on days when he is not daydreaming his son will be a Olympic snowboard champion, representing, of course, his native Kazakhstan.

Christina was an athlete too. She was already an accomplished gymnast, a swimmer, and dancer. But most remarkably she played second base for the Canyon del Oro Pirates. She was the only girl on the little league team. This last fact makes more sense when learns that her grandfather is Dallas Green, who was the manager of the Philadelphia Phillies in 1980 when they won a World Series title, and later also managed the New York Yankees and New York Mets. Her father, John Green, is a scout for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Her other brother, eleven years old, is also named Dallas, and apparently named after their grandfather.

Would Christina have gone on to be a student athlete? Of course she would. But would sports have also become her career as it had for her dad and granddad?

Christina loved animals. At home, she had as pets her very own Geckos, and she also cared for the dogs and cats of her neighbors. She had ambitions, she told her parents, to be a veterinarian. At nine, she even had some of the specifics worked out. She would study at New York University. She had been born back east, in a small Pennsylvania town, so she wanted to go back East. She was born on Sept. 11th 2001, even featured in a book of children born on that day. Even at nine, this was part of her identity, something she took pride in, a reason why sometimes she dressed in red, white, and blue. Would she have studies veterinary medicine at NYU? Is that what would have in part become of her life?

We will know nothing of what would have become of Christina Green had she been able to live her life to a natural expectancy. It is a void not dissimilar to the one now in her family’s heart.

But we know a couple of things for sure: “From the very beginning, she was an amazing child,” her mother told the New York Times. “She was very bright, very mature, off the charts. She was the brightest thing that happened that day.” In short, whatever she would have done with her life would have been amazing.

And whatever that was, her life would have been in some way a life of service.

We can never know for sure but this was a little girl who was going to give and do for others, whether that was her own family or in his community, or even something larger.

While posting about her the last couple of days on my Facebook page, comments like these were not uncommon:

Dawn Frantangelo, the NBC News correspondent, wrote: “Oh my lord in heaven. This is beyond sad and her life and death so emblematic of what the madness has come to. My heart goes out to her family and friends and all the glorious potential she had and symbolized.”

Mary Lou Butler, an administrative assistant to a fire chief in South Kingstown, Rhode Ilsand, wrote:“I can't help but think that maybe she would have been a future politician to help heal the world. Born on 9/11, just elected to student council...”

We should have done more to protect Christina Taylor Green than we should. Not just because we as a society to be a moral people should do everything we can to protect the lives of our children, but also because we don’t know what she would have contributed to us.

Some people reading this post will argue that nothing could be done, that her murder was a unpreventable act of senseless violence, a tragedy beyond our control. Without arguing that point, but not conceding that assertion, every day we leave at risk the lives of our country’s children.

Take for example Christina’s state of Arizona.

As just one example, in Arizona today, there are more children at this moment of time than ever before who are homeless, many of whom simply thrown out by parents who no longer want to care for them in hard economic times, or did not care in the first place anyway. According to a recent story in the Arizona Republic, more than 24,500 Arizona students were homeless during the past school year. That number is double what it was in 2003, and also some 18% higher than what it was last year.

We know virtually nothing of a single one of these children, who remain largely nameless and invisible to us. If anyone is really outraged about the murder of Christina Taylor Green, there is absolutely nothing to stop them from helping these children. If they want to honor her or her memory, they should. And one way to do it is simply go down to one of the shelters where these kids hang out, say some kind words, ask what they might do for do them, and become involved in their lives in some small way that may even save their lives. Those with means should even consider taking one of them into their own homes.

As a writer, I have seen first hand how this country has allowed too many of its children and young people to be forgotten, unknown, unsafe, and left to die. A couple of years ago I wrote a story about a young Iraqi war veteran who came safely home from war only to be killed violently for wearing a Red Sox jersey in a Texas bar. When I went to watch a stick ball tournament held in a park named in his honor, I learned that several of his friends who he had played with in that same park as a child had died as a result of violence. Those kids died in part because they were marginalized by our society.

One of the first stories I ever covered as a reporter was about the deaths of dozens of mentally retarded children because of abuse and neglect while they were wards of the District of Columbia government. Dozens and dozens of these children died over two decades as the local government, the local news media, law enforcement agencies, medical agencies which were supposed to oversee their care, failed in their responsibilities and did nothing.

Those particular children died because they were marginalized. They were African-African, they were mostly from impoverished and poor families, and they were mentally retarded. They died because we value some human life, including that of some children, over others.

Christina Taylor Green came from a loving, devoted, well to do family; she had a famous grandfather; and she had advantages most children do not have and may never have in their lifetimes.

What do I take away from her killing? Every American child is now at the margins.